


Time Isn't the Line She Thinks It Is

by CiderApples



Category: Fringe (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, no longer canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 01:24:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15786093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiderApples/pseuds/CiderApples
Summary: Peter's been dragged back into his universe, albeit one that's forgotten him completely. Viewed as an impostor by his father and a stranger by his lover, what's the very least he can do?  ...probably let Olivia know she's being roofied on the regular, for starters.





	Time Isn't the Line She Thinks It Is

**Author's Note:**

> S4 Fringe, y'all.

There was nothing.

There was nothing, and then there was something, and then Peter was back.

But back  _where_ , was the question.

This universe was like Cheers, in reverse: a place where nobody knew his name.

He knew  _their_  names. He knew  _them_ (or at least he knew a _version_ of them, in a time and place from which he'd been evicted). But here, in this universe, it was like he'd never existed at all.

So what was it, then?

His universe, gone wrong?

A different universe, not his at all?

And why did Olivia smell so weird?

 

* * *

  

She reeked, actually.

A sweet smell that Peter sort-of recognized.

At first, he'd figured it was the lab that stunk - some unstoppered concoction of Walter's just wafting every-fuck-where - but then the scent drifted toward him on the updraft from the file he tossed on Olivia's desk, the whip of her hair as she turned was just _saturated_ with it, and Peter knew, in a moment, exactly what it was.

 

* * *

 

It took him forever to convince everyone that she reeked of standard-issue knockout gas.

"Really," Peter said, glancing between Olivia and the person who (in another world) he would've called his father. "You don't-? Walter, _you,_ at least, should recognize the smell."

Walter only looked stonily over the tables. His expression said the same damn thing it said every day, ever since Peter had tried to explain the whole father-son-in-another-universe thing.  _Impostor._  

"Well, look; don't do it for _me,"_ Peter said. "But don't you want to know for her sake?"

Huffing, Walter got up, ambled over and planted his nose uncomfortably in Olivia's hair. The lines on his forehead collapsed into each other. He paused, not wanting Peter to be right, but unable to dispute it. "So it is," he said.

"And I assume that's not your doing?" Peter prompted, just in case. Because if it _were_ his Walter.... But, no.

"My dear," Walter said, eyeing the woman who looked exactly like the woman Peter was unstoppably in love with, "it appears that someone may have some untoward intentions toward you."

 

* * *

 

By the end of the day, Olivia was on not-quite-official twenty-four-hour surveillance.

Repulsive as the idea was to her, the idea of uninvited guests standing over her unconscious body in her own home was a bit worse, and Lincoln wheedled her until she agreed. Peter built the bugs himself so that no requisition forms would grace Broyles' desk. He constructed them well and carefully, and Olivia left with four of them to install - one for every room in her apartment, save the bathroom. There was no budging on the bathroom.

She placed them.

And then they all waited.

 

* * *

 

It worked.

At least, they assumed it did, because nobody showed up on the tapes, and the telltale fumes stopped following Olivia everywhere she went.

The upside of their vigilance was that Olivia's migraines stopped.

The downside was that things got a little _weird._

The weirdness crept up on them at first - just a few flickering lights, some misplaced objects. Walter seemed uneasy, but said nothing. Peter thought he might know why; but he, too, said nothing.

It was only when disaster became imminent - when Olivia's unplugged toaster went up in flames while she slept and was only extinguished because Peter happened to glance at the monitor at just the right moment - that Walter finally dug the relevant files from the second basement of the Lyman building. The folders were bronzed with rot and mold, but the photographs (they looked like film stills, some sort of video captures), fading aside, were good as new.

Lincoln was the only one surprised to see little Olivia sitting in the charred room.

Walter was surprised that Peter _wasn't_ surprised - that Peter seemed quite comfortable with Olivia's top-secret past - but Peter picked no quarrel. Just thought to himself:  _told you so._

"Let me get this straight," Lincoln said, pointing to the photo but staring at Olivia. "That room...that's because of you?"

Peter couldn't tell from Olivia's expression if she was proud or ashamed or both. One thing she wasn't: scared. But he could tell she expected  _them_ to be.

"Whatever the true purpose of Olivia's mystery visitors," Walter said, "they were effectively suppressing the effects of the Cortexiphan."

"And now that we've shut them out?"

Walter shrugged.

"Maybe we should stop surveillance," Lincoln suggested, eyes darting under his glasses, looking for approval. "Let them come back. Maybe there's more to this than we understand." 

But Peter was practically grinning, riveted to Olivia. "No," he said. "We're not stopping. Unless, of course, you want to."

Olivia thought about it.

"With your safety at stake," Lincoln said, trying to sway her, "I don't think it's a good idea to keep going."

She bit her lip.

"So far, it's just a toaster," Lincoln pried. "But what if it gets worse? How do we handle that? How do we handle...you?"

Olivia's face fell slightly, and Peter frowned.

 _"I_ can handle you," he said. He said it with enough conviction to bypass Lincoln and Walter altogether. He spoke directly to the center of her head. Her expression jumped, and it was so close, just _so exactly close_ to the way his own Olivia would've done it.

"Look, in the place where I came from," he told her, "there's no end to what you can do. I've been there; I've seen you do it. I know what to expect, and I promise you, _I_ can handle it."

Ordinarily, Olivia would have looked to Walter at this moment, silently asking for his read. She didn't look to Walter now, though, against her better judgement. She looked straight to Peter, who looked straight back.

"If you've believed anything I've said to you since I showed up here," Peter said, "believe _that."_

And, fuck if she knew why, but she did.

 

* * *

 

"I have some sleeping pills," she ventured, on the first night she spent in his apartment (the one he'd rented on his own because Walter still refused to trust him). She was holding them, ready to take them, but Peter shook his head.

"Pills aren't gonna help what you've got," he said. "Believe me. Besides, you really want to take a prescription that Walter wrote?"

She tipped her head, acquiescing, too nervous to smile. Didn't stop him from smiling back at her.

"Sweetheart, I'm not afraid of you," he said. She thought he might have winked as he walked away toward the kitchen. "Drink?"

She trailed along behind him, working up to say something, and it took her half an hour and two gin-and-tonics to get there.

"Where you came from..." she started, the alcohol having taken effect, "you said I could do things."

From the opposite end of the couch, Peter nodded. "You could."

"What kinds of things?"

He smiled tiredly. "Anything," he said. "Absolutely anything." His eyes took too long to move off hers, pupils spreading like ash, and the softness, the fondness of that reaction, stirred something up. Something small and curious and hungry.

"I'm not her," she whispered. 

But, looking into her jaguar-wide eyes, it was suddenly, incredibly clear to Peter that she wished she were. 

 

* * *

 

The bald men watched through the window, from a hill.  

"He is a catalyst," the one said. "He has been...introduced."

"Re-introduced," the other replied.

"Yes. That."

"It will cause...complications."

"It may."

"And the woman..."

"She may remember."

"No. If he is here, she _will."_

 

* * *

 

At four in the morning, she woke him with a thin thread of a whisper.

_"Peter."_

He pulled himself to his elbows in bed, trying to find her in the dark.

She hung at the door, and he knew before she could say it: the wires in the walls were crackling.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered.

"Peter," she said again, and her smile stretched wide. "I remember."

 

 

 

 


End file.
